


A Slate Erased

by avislightwing



Series: Candlelight to Candlelight [2]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Bad Ending, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Cyclical Construction, Gen, Inspired by Poetry, Post-Episode 26, Purple Prose, as always, misuse of italics, more or less
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-17
Updated: 2018-07-17
Packaged: 2019-06-11 18:22:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15321501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avislightwing/pseuds/avislightwing
Summary: Trying to live with open hands comes with consequences.





	A Slate Erased

_Under the wide and starry sky,_

_Dig the grave and let me lie…_

(“Requiem”, Robert Louis Stevenson)

Mollymauk Tealeaf died on a snowy morning, with grey clouds scudding across the sky.

Everything was colorless, the landscape washed of brightness and pigment. Even Nott’s green skin and Caleb’s blue eyes were tinted grey.

There was only one splash of brightness, and it was the still form with purple skin and glinting jewelry and a multicolored coat and ruby-red eyes and scarlet blood dying the snow around him.

It was like the last page in a storybook.

 _Once upon a time_ , the story would read, _there was a person, and he woke up in a grave with no name and no memories._

Two years before, a tiefling clawed his way through the frozen ground and was reborn into moonlight. He shed the dark clothes of his past, the heavy silver that weighed him down, and clothed himself in color and joy. He called himself empty and spun a life around the sounds that laid heavy on his tongue in the grave, draping shining threads around his head like the moonlight that helped birth him.

_He stumbled into a clearing of circus performers, and a woman made of moonlight caught him as he fell, and they became his new family. He found a father, and a best friend, and happiness._

_He left every place better than when he arrived._

Mollymauk named himself after an albatross, that bird that spreads its wings and envelops the sky, the bird that catches the moon in its feathers and doesn’t let its feet touch the ground. He named himself for luck.

It’s bad luck to slay an albatross. Your ship will sink and drag everyone down with it.

_He made his home in a circus tent. He played with swords of glass and laughed long and loud and comforted children as best he could. He pulled cards from his deck and told those around him that their lives would be happy, happy, happy._

Molly knew his life was ticking away like the old pocket watch he’d found on his body, the one he’d left in the slough of pine needles along with the silk-and-velvet burial shroud clothes he shed, a cocoon of black fabric like pools of blood in his wake. With each step, he felt the man who used to inhabit his body creeping up on him like a predatory shadow, ready to steal his memories and personhood and life, ready to smother him in dirt once more. So he existed in the present, and he drank heavy and lived light, because he knew every moment might be his last. He loved deep and kept his hands open, because he knew if you gripped something too tightly, it fled.

It turned out the one thing he held too tightly was himself.

_One day, he met a group of people in a tavern. They were a motley crew, much like his family, multicolored and multifaceted, some prone to blow windows open and some to hide their faces and some to hit things when things didn’t go their way. They saw his show, and fought alongside him, and helped him solve the mystery of the circus, and when they left, he went with them._

Molly came face-to-face with his past and did not cringe from it so much as erase it. Words were dragged from his tongue with a spell, but he knew the ones that counted: Mollymauk Tealeaf. There was only one name that counted. He caught an updraft and soared as Caleb affirmed him in the best way possible. _I am satisfied_. And his name. For a moment, the shadow lightened. He’d escaped this time.

_They travelled the land and sampled what it had to offer. They fought, and they won, and they celebrated. He read happy futures and he handed out coins and smiles like they were in never-ending supply and he wrapped himself in the beautiful things of that world. There was never a brighter star or a fuller moon._

_But as with all that burn brightly, they burn short, and he was no exception._

They found a bird.

She was small, black and fluffy, and firmly anchored on the ground. She chirped in their voices, and Jester adored her, and she was given a knife and taught the right things to say and she made Molly go cold inside.

She was so small and so fragile. He could feel her quick, fluttering heartbeat in her blood from ten paces away, and he knew not to get attached, because she wasn’t going to last.

Nothing lasted in this world of his, and that made everything beautiful and everything sad and he himself the most so.

_Like in the tales of old, one must be careful not to fly too high, for fear of falling. He flew for the moon, knowing he would burn._

The bird survived.

The door shut behind her.

Jester and Yasha and Beau were crying.

He was not.

_On the day he died, the moon did not shine._

It was cold the morning his friends disappeared. The sky clouded over, and he could see his breath. Everything looked muted, and though his heart ran hot, he shivered.

That same heart ached, and he knew he’d held on too tightly.

_A grave gaped before him, and his wings were aflame._

Molly faced Lorenzo, and as his mouth shaped the words to cast Blood Maledict, he knew what would happen. He could feel his heart stuttering in his chest, and as his vision went red, he felt a moment of terror. He hadn’t planned to go down like this. He loved life too much.

Too much.

He’d clung too tightly, burned too bright, flown too high.

He should’ve known.

_He looked to his friends, now family, and spat his defiance into his murderer’s face. For, you see, he could predict everyone’s happiness but his own._

Their only comfort was that Lorenzo had slain an albatross.

His ship would go down, and he with it.

 _Once upon a time,_ the story read, _a person was put in a grave, and a marker set above it:_

_Mollymauk Tealeaf._

_Loved many. Loved by all._

Snow painted over the red.

_Let go, Mollymauk Tealeaf._

**Author's Note:**

> hey howdy I know this is the second fic of this nature I've written since Thursday don't judge me this is how I cope
> 
> find me on tumblr [@birdiethebibliophile](birdiethebibliophile.tumblr.com)!


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